


The Shortest Day

by PeroxidePirate



Series: Ficmas 2010 [1]
Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/F, Gen, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-14 07:44:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeroxidePirate/pseuds/PeroxidePirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long Night Eve is a strange time to be caught between cultures. But it's easier if you're not the only one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shortest Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/gifts).



> Written for Goldenlake's Ficmas exchange, 2010

The entire week before Long Night, the house bustled. Tris was a whirlwind, bossing the maids as she tried to replicate the things she had liked about her childhood holidays. Briar, surprisingly, took the festivities just as seriously — it’s true, that may have been due to the food. And elsewhere, the Duke’s Citadel and Winding Circle’s temple village were equally awash with preparations. The Living Circle keeps right on turning, as they say.

Just after breakfast on Long Night Eve, Daja spun her staff in lazy circles, thinking. These days, she wasn’t sure what she believed in — the Circle, the Trader gods, both, or neither. Whatever her convictions, the season always made her ache in the place that remained Tsaw’ha to the core.

“Hey — do you mind?” Briar approached behind her, arms full of cypress boughs. “Tris wanted these around the windows.”

“Sure.” Daja stepped aside, letting her brother into their front hall. The sparsely furnished room was where they usually practiced staff work, but she didn’t want to get in the way if holiday preparations were in progress. “I’ll just head upstairs, then.”

“Wait,” he said, “There’s another pile of boughs in the kitchen. Could you take some up, if you’re going?”

“Is Tris putting greenery around every window in the house?” Even as she asked, she changed direction, heading for the kitchen instead of the stairs.

He grinned. “No — I am.”

“Don’t they mind? The cypress trees, I mean.”

“It’s a trick Rosethorn taught me. They need pruning anyway, no two ways about it. I spell the boughs to live a little longer, and they’re happy to brighten things up before they get added to the compost heap.”

Daja shook her head. Somehow knowing the branches were dying — and knew it — didn’t make the custom any less strange.

.

Inside the kitchen, Daja collided with a veritable wall of scent: cinnamon, cloves, ginger, celery. Tris stood before an overloaded stove, stirring two large pots with long wooden spoons. She held one with her hand, the other with a rope of wind. Her free hand held a stick of chalk, which she was using to write on an airborne slate.

Astra, the kitchen maid, rolled cookie dough out on the table. She’d been working for them long enough not to be bothered by Tris’s use of magic in the kitchen.

The promised pile of cypress boughs was beside the back door, spilling across the clean stone floor. “He’s not kidding,” she murmured. There were easily enough to bracket every window and door in the house.

“Close the door!” Tris ordered. “Bread’s rising. Don’t let the heat out.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Daja kicked it shut behind her. “But aren’t we buying bread, these days?”

“Oh, it’s you.” Tris turned, nodding hello. “It’s stollen bread, my grandmother’s recipe. You make it with dried fruit. I had to use raisins and orange peel, instead of cherries and currants, but otherwise this is exactly like the one Grandmother made.”

“I thought you hated your grandmother.”

“Yes,” Tris said patiently, “but she’s an excellent cook, and I’d be foolish not to use what she taught me.

There was no arguing with that logic — especially when the kitchen smelled so good. “All right,” Daja said easily. She crossed to the pile of branches.

“Daj, are you doing anything?”

She stopped, hands just closing on the top of the pile. “Not exactly. Why?”

“There was a mishap with the chutney, earlier,” Tris explained, and Astra’s cheeks flushed. “I’d send Astra for a new batch of ingredients, but I need her here...”

If the mishap was the maid’s fault, it was a sure sign of progress that Tirs was willing to give the girl another chance. “Pass me your list, then,” Daja said. “I’ll go to market.”

.

The sky was gray, threatening rain, but so far the streets were dry. A cool wind blew through the city, and folk huddled in their cloaks. But there was a feeling of festivity in the air, too. Everything from shop doors to hitching posts was decorated with swoops and scallops of bright ribbon. Unlit candles were everywhere, too, awaiting the midday lighting ceremony. Nervously, Daja sharpened her vision until she could see magic — yes, the buildings in their street were magically protected against fire; every candle she passed was spelled so it couldn’t be used to light anything else. It was more expensive, but worth every bit.

The walk helped to clear her head. This was her first Long Night in Emelan since she was fourteen — her first Long Night as a home-owning craftswoman rather than a wandering mage. Wandering mage was much closer to traveling Tsaw’ha, she found. But even if she didn’t completely understand the way this city celebrated the season, it was good to be with her adopted family again.

A few blocks from the house, an ornate carriage drew alongside her. The door opened. “Daja!”

She looked up to see Sandry leaning toward her. “Hello!”

“Hop in,” Sandry suggested, and Daja climbed up beside her.

“Tris sent me to market,” she explained, holding up her list.

“I’m shopping, too. Care for some company?”

“Of course.” Daja grinned.

As the carriage continued on its way, Sandry said, “You’re all coming to dinner tonight, and the ball after, right?”

There was sure to be a certain amount of awkwardness to that — especially the ball part — but it was Long Night, and Sandry was family. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

The carriage put them down at the edge of Market Square, and they tumbled out into the cold.

They spent half an hour poking through various market stalls, and Daja managed to collect the items Tris had requested, plus a few other things. Eventually Sandry looked up at the Market Square clock and winced. “I didn’t mean to be so long,” she said. “Erdogun will be having a fit.”

“Tris will, too. Chutney,” Daja explained, “is a matter of great importance.”

“It is delicious, though.”

“It is. I’ll ask her to make a double batch.”

Sandry grinned. “That sounds excellent.”

They climbed back into the carriage, setting their purchases on the other seat. A few moments later, Daja was clamoring out at her house. Even from the street, she could see the cypress garlands adorning most of the windows — Briar had evidently made good progress without her.

.  
 _  
Use the front door,_ Tris said through their magic, as soon as Daja headed toward the back of the house.

 _Right. Stollen bread._ The back door led directly into the kitchen; opening it would bring a gust of cold air.

She let herself in through the front room, then took her bag of ingredients into the kitchen and dropped it into a chair.

“Mail came,” Tris said, as Astra began unpacking the shopping bag. “There’s a letter for you.”

“For me?” Daja wondered.

It was a plain envelope, and there was no return address, but the writing was familiar. Sorely missed, these past few months, but familiar. She turned it over in her hands before using her belt knife to slit the flap. The text was in Trader-Talk.  
.  


  
 _My friend,_

 _I hope this letter finds you. I hope it finds you well, of course, but given the natures of both our lives, I hope it finds you. Forgive my brevity, please, and the time since my last letter. It’s been a strange year, but it’s drawing to a close, at least._

 _We’re not traveling our usual routes this winter — we’re avoiding Yanjing and Namorn, due to the war, and that has turned everything else completely around. So we’ll be in Summersea at Long Night. If you’re in residence, I would love to see you. You’re always welcome in the caravan, and my wagon in particular._

 _Take care,  
Polyam_

.

The caravan was parked on a hill beyond Summersea, Polyam’s tiny wagon at the outside edge. It was too warm for snow, but the wind blowing up from the west was cool, gusting against the unprotected flanks of the trailers.

“We avoid winter, most of the time,” Polyam said. “You know. We go where the trading is, and there’s not much, when the temperature drops.”

“Where were you last year?” Daja asked, wistfully.

“This night? We were far to the south, camped on the beach. All sun and sand, and waves higher than your head.”

“It sounds wonderful.”

“Most of the caravan thought so,” Polyam said wryly. “But it’s hard to walk in the sand — and harder to get sand out of this leg.” She tapped her metal knee.

Daja winced. “I could take a look at it sometime,” she suggested. “Maybe there’s a way to protect it against that.”

Polyam shook her head. “It works fine. Don’t trouble yourself.”

“It’s no trouble. Really,” Daja insisted. “I could look at it now, even.”

Polyam’s wry smile returned. “It’s Long Night. Don’t you have plans?”

Daja shook her head. “This afternoon? No. Tris and Briar are at Winding Circle, for the candle lighting vigil. Sandry is with her uncle. Tonight-” she faltered.

“Tonight you’re busy.” She refilled Daja’s teacup, then returned the pot to the cloth, shifting it to the precise middle of the tea tray. “I understand.”

“Tonight there’s a ball at the Citadel. My invitation said, _‘Daja Kisubo, and guest,’_ but there wasn’t anyone I cared to bring.” She looked up. “Unless you’d like to-”

“A noble’s ball?” Polyam laughed. “You’d bring _me_ , a crippled trader woman, to a nobleman’s ball?”

“Why not?” Daja asked, steadily.

“People will think-”

“I know.” Polyam’s hand rested on the table, near the teapot. Daja covered it with hers. “Let them.”

Their eyes met. Polyam’s expression slowly shifted from annoyance to disbelieve to amused affection. Finally she said, “I can’t dance, you know.”

Daja shrugged. “I usually don’t — except with Sandry, if Briar’s elsewhere when she needs rescuing from a self-important kaq.”

“The four of you just reshape the world as you go. Do you realize that?”

Daja pressed her palm down on the back of Polyam’s hand, the living metal soft between their flesh. “Do you mind?”

Polyam turned her hand over, weaving their fingers together. “No,” she said, as though it surprised her to say so. “Only, I’m not used to it.” She smiled crookedly, the right side of her face pulling into a grin. “Yet.”


End file.
